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Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 113

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Contents (ISJ 113, Winter 2007)

113

1

jan 07

Notes on contributors (ISJ 113, Winter 2007)

113

2

jan 07

Chris Harman: The wounded beast

113

3

jan 07

The debacle of US policy in Iraq is the central fact of global politics today. The neocons’ gambit for to securing ‘a New American Century’ of global hegemony by occupying Iraq is backfiring with devastating effects for US imperialism—and this can only unleash a political crisis at the heart of the beast. Yet there are still some on the left who fail to understand this.

Richard Seymour: In the name of decency: the contortions of the pro-war left

113

9

jan 07

In January 2005, following the torture and murder of the Iraqi trade unionist Hadi Saleh, ‘Labour Friends of Iraq’ issued an open letter demanding the Stop the War Coalition condemn the murder (which it already had), and drop its support for the right of Iraqis to resist the occupation.

Megan Trudell: Rifondazione votes for war

113

33

jan 07

Many supporters of Italy’s Rifondazione Comunista party are shocked and disoriented. Three years ago it put itself at the front of Europe’s anti-capitalist movement. But its deputies and senators have now voted to refinance Italian troops in Afghanistan and send Italian troops to Lebanon as a result of choosing to join the centre-left government of Romano Prodi, alongside the social democrats of the Democrat Left and a section of the Christian Democrats.

Martin Smith: Britain: The shape of the working class

113

49

jan 07

‘There was a time when one in four of the world’s big ships were built on the Clyde and more than 1 million of the UK’s workers were coal miners. Today the supermarket giant Tesco’s employs just over 250,000 workers—making it the biggest private sector employer’. So began a report on BBC 2’s Newsnight. The programme took for granted the ‘common sense’ argument that the traditional working class in Britain is in terminal decline and is being replaced by a low paid, unorganised, part time, casualised workforce based in the service sector.

Charlie Kimber: Britain: Livingstone—the last reformist?

113

71

jan 07

London’s Evening Standard newspaper recently ran the front page headline ‘Ken Backs Terrorist on the Tube’. Most of the capital’s 7 million inhabitants will have been in no doubt who ‘Ken’ was. Almost uniquely among British politicians, London Mayor Ken Livingstone has achieved the status of being recognisable from his first name alone.

Hassan Mahamdallie: Britain: Muslim working class struggles

113

93

jan 07

One product of the demonisation of Britain’s Muslims by those forces desperate to provide a scapegoat for the fallout from the ‘war on terror’ has been a concerted effort to separate them out from the rest of society, to make them seem ‘alien’ and culturally distant—especially in the eyes of the wider working class. These attacks obscure the reality that the majority of Muslims (though not all, of course) belong to the working class.

Chris Harman: Snapshots of capitalism today and tomorrow

113

119

jan 07

What is really happening to world capitalism today? In this article I use diagrams and graphs to provide some snapshots of the present shape of the system, deliberately minimising wider theoretical issues, which I have dealt with elsewhere.

Daniel Bensaïd: The return of strategy

113

139

jan 07

Daniel Bensaid is a leading member of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) in France. This article takes up issues arising in a discussion on revolutionary strategy to be found in the LCRs theoretical journal Critique Communiste in March 2006 and continued at a seminar in Paris in June.

Neil Davidson: The French Revolution is not over

113

159

jan 07

A review of Henry Heller, The Bourgeois Revolution in France, 1789-1815 (Berghahn Books, 2006), £36.50

John Newsinger: Wet Blunkett

113

179

jan 07

A review of David Blunkett, The Blunkett Tapes (Bloomsbury, 2006), £25
With the publication of his supposed ‘diaries’, David Blunkett has achieved an impressive hat-trick: the former heads of the Metropolitan Police, the Prison Service and the Armed Forces have all publicly called him a liar. This is a remarkable achievement for any former home secretary, let alone one as right wing as Blunkett. Indeed nothing like it has ever happened before.

Andrew Murray: Important signpost

113

183

jan 07

A review of John Rees, Imperialism and Resistance (Routledge, 2006), £14.99

Chris Harman: When Reason was revolt

113

187

jan 07

A review of Jonathan I Israel, Enlightenment Contested (Oxford, 2006), £30
This is a long (871 pages of text), often repetitive, occasionally confusing, and very important book. It continues the challenge to the conventional view of the Enlightenment made by Israel five years ago in his The Radical Enlightenment.

Paul Blackledge: Not just opium

113

191

jan 07

A review of Scott Mann, Heart of a Heartless World: Religion as Ideology (Black Rose Books, 1999), £13.99
How should socialists relate to social movements whose aims are informed by religious ideas? A moment’s consideration of this problem is enough to suggest that a simple answer is precluded by the very diversity of such movements.

Joseph Choonara: The state of revolutions

113

194

jan 07

A review of D L Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today (Pluto, 2006), £15, Tariq Ali, Pirates of the Caribbean—Axis of Hope (Verso, 2006), £14.99 and Michael Lebowitz, Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century (Monthly Review Press, 2006), £10.95
These three books take seriously the challenge, laid down by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez at the 2005 World Social Forum, to reinvent socialism for the 21st century. Each of the books attempts to do this with reference to recent struggles in Latin America, in particular the unfolding ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela.

Chris Harman: Dialectics of morality

113

199

jan 07

A review of Alex Callinicos, The Resources of Critique (Polity, 2006), £16.99
Alex Callinicos attempts to deal with important questions in this book. How is it possible for people conditioned by the structures of a certain society to go beyond these (a process Alex calls ‘transcendence’) to fight for a different society? How is it possible to find criteria of truth that escape social conditioning? And is it possible to lay down universally valid moral principles?

Paul Blackledge: Questioning post-Fordism

113

202

jan 07

A review of Bill Dunn, Global Restructuring and the Power of Labour (Palgrave, 2004), £45
Bill Dunn, whose edited collection on Trotsky was recently reviewed on these pages, has produced an excellent critique of the assumption, common across parts of the left, that changes in the conditions of labour over the last few decades have had disastrous consequences for the capacity of workers to mount collective struggles against capital.

Chris Harman: Pick of the quarter

113

204

jan 07

A regular survey of articles which readers will find useful. Some, although by no means all, are available on the web.

Barry Conway: Feedback: 1956 and Labour

113

206

jan 07

Response to Stan Newens: Memories of a seminal year (1956) in International Socialism 112.